25/06/2025
Magdalen*a*❤️🔥❤️🔥❤️🔥
magdalene
her name means tower
not w***e
not sinner
not infidel of the seven
devils
they labeled her
less-than
because they feared
what her tower held
not sin but scripture
not shame but sacredness
not filth but flame
a tower of truth
but towers fall, don’t they?
when men build stories
from stone
and forget the word
was born in woman’s body
at the edge of things
cracked open with knowing
she was never the footnote
not the soft epilogue
to his ministry
she was his equal
mirror to messiah
goddess to god
his counter-spell
his mirror myth
his ritual in red
not w***e not slave
but beloved
a woman undone
by the very thing
that made her divine:
her desire
but listen, love—
she didn’t break the jar
because she was desperate
she broke it
because she was called
called to speak
when silence was safer
called to stay
when the others fled
called to embody
the towering truth:
that strength and softness
are not separate
that holiness can wear hips
that god grew inside a womb
but also walked beside one
loved and worshipped one
when the world bloomed
in bruises and blessings
this kind of power
will not do
if we let a woman
be beloved
be equal
be tower
what’s next?
a tabernacle?
a sanctuary?
a truth that eclipses all the lies
of smallness and inferiority?
so they silenced her
with ink and pulpit
turned her hips into heresy
her hair into sin
her hands into something
not fit to beckon or bless
they scraped the sacred
from her body
and called it repentance
scrubbed her clean
of her wildness
tried to bleach her into silence
folded her
into a cautionary tale
the scarlet stain
on holy scrolls
but history is porous
and so is the grave
after centuries of redacted gospel
after pulpits built on her silence
she is waking from shadow
in boots of fervor
incense clinging to the brazier
of her spine
this is not a tale of repentance
this is a story of
theft
and now
it is a tale of return
another kind of resurrection
the tower stands again, friends
not in lace and halos
but barefoot
with red clay on her soles
and a voice like an earthquake
wrapped in linen
she does not walk back into scripture
she bursts through the margins
mud-footed and mythic
pulling the divine back into the body
she has risen again
not with trumpets
but with soil under her nails
the rhizome gospel
under her tongue
green and feral
and determined to grow
she’s coming back
to reclaim
every woman
called ruin
for daring to know spirit
by touch
and tenderness
she’s here to walk
the crooked path again
the one where myth
and marrow meet
she is not looking for apology
she is looking for fire
in the eyes of humans
who remember
that holiness
can wear hips
that sacredness
is not silence
and that sometimes
the most faithful thing
you can do
is stand tall
a tower of truth
a sentinel at the beginning
of a new story
rooted in love
that outlasts hatred
a tower of belonging
that outshines fear
poem Angi Sullins "Magdalene's Tower" from my new book "Unmasking a Myth" AVAILABLE HERE: https://angisullins.com/shop-3-2/
art credit: uknown. if you know this artist, please let me know
